Of this allow,
If ever you have spent time worse ere now;
If never, yet that Time himself doth say
He wishes earnestly you never may.

-Time in The Winter’s Tale

Time is an important part of fiction. Often a scene in a book will take roughly the same amount of time to read as it would to happen in actuality. On other occasions we’re transported hours, days, weeks, months or even years in the space of just one page (or one speech, as with the Shakespeare quote above). If you think about it, a book is a type of time travel.

Now I’ve taken my own sweet time to introduce this month’s theme, the prompt is to write a story (of at least 200 words) where you play with time. This could be directly by featuring time travel or it could be narratively by using flashbacks, flash forwards or telling a story about two different time periods. You’ll earn 20 beans for completing this prompt as well as it counting towards the chance to snag our shiny Quill and Ink award.

There is no deadline as such for these prompts but if you’d like it to count towards your chance of earning the award for a specific year, we’ll need it by the end of that school year. If you’re comfortable sharing, then post below. If not, email your story to us via hol.bookclub @ gmail.com (without the spaces). Oh and remember it’s a good idea to check through your piece carefully for spelling and grammatical errors as they make it harder for people to properly enjoy your work.

"Does the Walker choose the path or the path the walker?" -Garth Nix
(Av/sig by Amy!)

(I'm doing a big book with a lot of hol prompts. This is part two of a story I'm writing. Thank you for the prompt.)

Soon the kids had finished rehearsing and their mother Karol had woken up from her long nap and went to fix dinner. They had ham, and steamed vegetables, with mashed potatoes, which is something that was a tradition in their family every Christmas.

All of a sudden Jacob got on to his feet and declared to their mother, "Ma we have put on a Christmas nativity play for your enjoyment. If you would kindly see us in five minute time in the living room the show will begin shortly." With that he turned and went to the living room to get ready for the play. The rest of the kids got up also and followed their big brother.

No one talked for the next few minutes as they hurried about getting ready to put on the play. Jacob started to think about the last time he and his two eldest sisters had put on the last play. That play was for their father the Christmas before he left them. Never to look back or send them a letter ever again. Back then Jacob was only five years old, but he remembered that awful day as if it just happened this year even though he was thirteen years older now.

Maria wondered what would have happened if she had turned left instead of right on that fateful day. She didn't wonder this very often but when she did, it always shook her. What if. The possibilities were of a magnitude which shook her whole beingness.

One day she had a dream, a day dream. It was after imbibing one of Joe's infamous scientific experiments, which he swore would be something to help a person stay alert and awake while studying during term finals. She had suspiciously asked what the ingredients were, after the last time she had swallowed one of his potions and her hair turned a yucky pinkish green for a whole week. He rattled off a bunch of ingredients and she looked them all up. They seemed innocuous, in and of themselves, but who knows what would happen when combined? And what charm or charms did he use in the making of it?

It didn't matter, she had History of Mundane World Wars to study as well as Despriggifying the Vortextual Spagnolia. She needed to be alert. As she sagged off to her day dream, fighting it but failing to wake up, her last thought was of Joe and retaliation.

In the daydream she is back to that same location. It's a corridor in a Mundane school. This time, though, when she is rushing to a class, she turned left. She passed by a group of students that she knew well, and waved and smiled. Waving caused her books to shift in her arms. The books shifting in her arms caused her balance to waver, and she started toppling backwards slightly. Having extremely good balance, she caught herself -- but at the precise moment someone caught her from behind.

"What?" she said, attempting to free herself from the hands of her 'rescuer'. "I got it, but thank you."

She turned around. A sort of tall, sort of muscular, guy -- longish curly brown hair -- gazed at her. He grinned and said "Maria, I've been looking for you! And here you are falling at my feet!"

She looked at him suspiciously .... and woke up from the daydream. She realized that, somehow, either way she would have ended up where she was right now because that is how it was. Kismet. The guy had been Joe and he had been looking for her to give her an envelope from this very school, inviting her to join it and study, learning to be a Shadowhunter.

She felt someone's gaze on her and looked up. Yes, there was Joe, the sneak. He grinned, and nodded, then went back to whatever mischief he was doing. She realized she had shared that worry with him and now it didn't exist anymore.

She caused his drink to fountain up out of his mug and spray all over him anyway.

It was that time of the year when old grumpy bear was preparing to rest till the spring will wake him up with sunshine and high temperatures. Grabbing last resources that big bear was going to use during his hibernation, he padded into the hole, which he found a month ago when he was searching for some food. It was a clean and nice hole without any other dweller than himself. He remembered that day, when he realized that time for finding winter's shelter was running out. Accidently he came across with that marvelous hole and relieved that there was still a lot of time left, started searching for food.
These were sad memories, because it was again that time, when he was remembering his old family and his kids. Being a bear is not easy, especially when you need to part up with your own family.
After some seconds of looking around in his cozy hole, he laid down and started chewing bone of the deer that he had killed last time. He was always doing this when he was deep in his thoughts. It was just so stressless and familiar to him. The time was passing quickly, even for animals. Being a kid was suddenly just a memory. Being an adult just something far away. The only thing which stays into infinity are memories.

Their lives had come to an end abruptly as the earthquake shook the ground beneath them. The two lovers' hands grasped tightly together as they said their goodbyes before the fire god sent flames from the heavens and they turned to solid ash.

---

Breauna had always loved history and her favorite topic was that of the ancient civilization Marczapultan. It was the city that was destroyed by fire overnight while its citizens were entombed forever beneath the cooling ash and smoke. She knew that the first chance she had, she wanted to visit that place. She was drawn to it by some invisible rope. The chance came in her third year of university when the archaeological dig began and she applied for the summer field study.

Upon her arrival, she was happy to finally see all the places she had read about and seen pictures of in person, but more than that, there was a familiarity there. She made friends quickly and there was a particular male student on the trip that she became increasingly close to. They were made partners in the beginning and realized that they both had a lot of the same quirks from their childhood years and that they had both been drawn to this civilization.

One evening, Breauna sat up on her cot after having the strangest dream. She looked around the room and on the other side noticed a figure of a person. She called out to them but they didn't answer and only motioned for her to follow them. Curiosity got the better of her and she stood, put on her shoes and followed the figure out of the tent. As she walked, she felt once again the familiarity of her surroundings, even to the point that she was able to picture the buildings around her that used to stand right where she stood. It was as if she was there thousands of years ago before the Great Quake that destroyed every living thing within the city.

Then she stopped. The wall before her held a door, but when she reached out to touch it, there was nothing there. The figure disappeared around the corner and Breauna ran to catch up, yelling at her to wait, but she was gone. Everything was back to normal again, but she noticed something new, something they had missed previous. There was a stone with an inscription in front of her where the wall must have been at one point. Perhaps it was still there.

The dig took a few weeks to uncover the archway that Breauna had informed them of which led them to believe a huge theater had once stood where they now stood. They began to search even more in the area, and eventually, they uncovered more bodies that were frozen in time. Breauna's heart began to beat faster as her partner and she dug faster and faster into the ground, sifting the sand to uncover more and more.

In that very moment, Breauna uncovered a gold chain with a ruby pendant. Nikolai, her partner, and she stared at it as they realized that it's location was actually on another petrified corpse. Yet for some reason, their hands didn't stop and they touched it at the same time as memories began flashing before both of their eyes.

It was then they knew why they had been brought to that place. The two bodies found side by side had been lovers seeking each other back out for millenia after their deaths, reincarnating over and over until they found their love's heart once more.

Shiloh Adlar, Seventh Year, Prefect, RQT Co-Captain"Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world." -Voltaire